Cargo may be transported by a variety of methods dependent on cost, transportation plan and pick-up and drop-off locations. Furthermore, if the commodities are perishable or fragile, additional shipping precautions may be required.
In a normal cargo transportation process, current locations and conditions of the transported cargo are hard to be perceived. In this situation, a multitude of communication methods are generally suggested to be provided among transportation means and transportation companies associated with the cargo transportation, such as mobile phone communications, facsimiling, emailing and other suitable and practicable methods. In the cargo warehouses, wharf storehouses and airport storehouses, manual management is still adopted and thus high cost and consuming labor are required.
To resolve this problem, many techniques have been set forth. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,704,626 disclosed “Logistics system and method with position control”, in which logistics system and method are mounted and applied on a vehicle and utilize vehicle position control for the logistics operations, such as loading and unloading material to and from the vehicle, in which the position control can be global positioning system (GPS)-based and/or based on linear movement of the vehicle, such as movement of a railcar along a rail track. Namely, the GPS is relied on to achieve the management of vehicle cargo positions and cargo import and export.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,429,810 disclosed “Integrated air logistics system”, in which satellite system position information is used for GPS for use of cargo trucks. By means of this method, a truck position may be unidirectionally passed to a receiver of the cargo or a container position may be directed to the receiver through a ground system. Further, tracking and management of the cargo serviced with the logistics system are achieved by positioning and communication modules of the GPS.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,961,323 set forth “Cargo monitor apparatus and method”, in which a miniature communication device and an antenna are placed on a container and a frequency of 27 MHz is adopted for communication with a communication receiver located nearby through the antenna so that the container may be assured with no movement of the container occurred. As such, the container may be well managed and protected from thefts.
However, none of the above prior arts provides an efficient management with respect to cargo import and export and may acquire real-time cargo temperature and position information.